Explanation:
From a
delicate orbit around asteroid 433 Eros,
the NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft's camera has now imaged the entire surface
of the
smalloddly-shaped world at least once.
Recorded on July 7th from a distance of 50 kilometers,
this
dramatic view is about 1.8 kilometers across.
It shows the walls and rims of two large overlapping
impact craters on the horizon.
Massive boulders which may be debris from the impacts are
perched along the crater edges.
The prominent boulder on the
horizon near picture center is about
40 meters long.
In fact, the NEAR mission
to Eros
has shown that along with
craters and boulders, grooves and ridges
are also common on the
asteroid's surface.
While the craters are clearly of impact origin,
puzzles about the other surface features still remain.
On July 13, controllers fired the spacecraft thrusters and
moved
NEAR Shoemaker to an even
closer 35
kilometer orbit to enable higher resolution surface studies.